Until this last year, I was a school administrator and thus never had time to decorate for fall. Now that I am retired and doing education consultant work, I have more time and enjoy decorating our home for different seasons.

My father passed away on July 27, 2017. I miss him, but know I will see him when I get to Heaven. Dad had several old cars and trucks. He loved to restore old vehicles. This container (oblong metal box in the photo above) is the toolbox (behind the driver’s seat) in one of three of trucks Dad had behind his barn. I believe the truck is from the 1940s.

My Mom purchased a small house down the street from us. It was in decent shape but needed some repairs and updates. In addition to electrical, plumbing, HVAC, and several cosmetic updates such as painting, tiling the bathroom floor, updating the shower, installing new flooring, painting kitchen cabinets, updating the fireplace, replacing doors, etc. we needed to patch several holes in the drywall.

In 2001, we moved to Cullman, Alabama and renovated two houses 🏘(side by side built in the 1930s) in the historical part of town. We had a contractor renovate one of the houses 🏚for our family to live in. Neal (and I as his trusty assistant 😉), renovated the second 🏚. Both houses were 💎s in the rough. I was skeptical 🤨, but Neal saw the potential 🤔.

Our patio porch has been an ongoing project for several years. In this post, I will share how we laid a brick border (brick roll lock) around the edge of our patio porch. A brick roll lock is a series of bricks laid on their face with their ends visible.

Over the past few years, we have been working on our porch. In this post, you will learn how to install simulated stone.

We used Hermitage simulated stone manufactured by Horizon Stone. We love this simulated stone because it looks like real stone because of variation; there are so many different shapes. We purchased this from Jenkins Brick in Pellham, Alabama. We also used Argos Custom Blended Masonry Cement; the color is Savannah Ivory.

We used Hermitage simulated stone manufactured by Horizon Stone. We purchased this from Jenkins Brick in Pellham, Alabama. We also used Argos Custom Blended Masonry Cement; the color is Savannah Ivory.

We love this simulated stone because it looks like real stone due to the variation; there are so many different shades and shapes. When we were renovating/adding on to our house, we actually traveled to Chattanooga to see this stone on a house.